AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am To Finish On Monday Following Weather Delay

The AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was without play on Saturday afternoon due to persistent high winds in the area, with tournament organisers now being forced into ending the tournament on Monday without amateurs. 

Before the suspension of play, Peter Malnati led the field at 12-under, two shots ahead of Joseph Bramlett and Keith Mitchell who are tied for second. Following the suspension of play, the PGA Tour’s chief referee, Gary Young, revealed that play will resume at 8am (GMT) in order to avoid any ‘logistical challenges’ and to make sure there is enough daylight to complete round three and the opportunity to start round four.

“Round 3's going to resume at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning," stated Young. "It's just, with the logistical challenges of getting everyone in position across three golf courses, all of the shuttles, 8 a.m. is about the time that we feel we need to accomplish that. 

“Round 4 is going to be professionals only. With the amateurs not being part of the final round field, we thought that the right thing to do is revert to our normal 65 and ties cut, not the 60 and ties cut that we have with the amateurs.

“To give everyone an idea of what we're looking at, we feel we have about three and a half hours left of play on the golf course to complete round 3. That should get us to about 11:30. And again, with all the logistical challenges, we will begin round 4 at approximately 12:30. And that tee time range would be two hours. So 12:30 to 2:30 off two tees in threesomes.

“We feel we have enough daylight to more than likely complete approximately nine holes, which should leave us nine holes to complete on Monday morning, with that time yet to be determined. But we will try to go early. Approximately in the 8 a.m. hour. That would be my guess.” He added.

Young went on to say that the committee had done everything they could to make sure play was unaffected, including slowing down the greens and spraying them with water in an attempt to create friction which would allow the ball to rest. Even with these measures in place, there were still ‘hairy situations’.

“We had two holes over on Monterey Peninsula that were giving us problems, hole 9 and hole 15. 9 was becoming a persistent problem, just given that the wind was much higher than originally forecasted earlier in the week. We did try some mitigation matters. We did try to apply some water to the green just to create a little bit of friction. Just a light spritz of water on the green. Which is something normal that we will do in hot conditions. But this was due to wind.

“So we were looking for anything we could do to try to keep a golf ball at rest, but we were getting some really hairy situations on that hole. We just did not want to continue play. We suspended play on Monterey Peninsula at 12:12. Then we suspended on the other two golf courses at 12:20. We didn't want play to go on any longer at the other two golf courses. I wanted to give them enough time to see if they could get the situation under control at Monterey Peninsula, but they could not."

With play set to get underway later on Sunday, Young is confident that the tournament will end without any further interruptions due to overnight forecasts which will improve conditions alongside the work carried out by the greenkeeping team. 

“I'm feeling that the additional moisture overnight, another 12 hours plus of greens growing, getting more growth. We've done everything we could to maximize the grass that's on these greens. We worked with the superintendents and just trying to think of anything that we could do to try to get a little more friction in the greens.”